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Monthly Archives: February 2017

When we’re synthesizing, a lot of what we’re doing is putting things into buckets. The hope is that the buckets help us make sense of things. For this to hold true, we need to make sure we’re using the right buckets for the right reasons… and the right people. Figuring this out is hard and takes lots of tries. For this reason, good synthesis usually includes lots of iterations where different bucketing schemes are validated with the people who will use them. Bad synthesis usually stops at one or a few iterations, with little to no testing.

One important thing to remember about bucketing is that there doesn’t have to be just one scheme for everything. Different bucketing schemes might work better in different circumstances. Be conscious of the different levels and intentions.

Our #AskandMaybeReceive experiment is live and we have yet to receive a response from folks. I am going to a message today to prod people one last time. I’m super curious if people don’t have unfulfilled needs, or if they are just too busy, or?

Take a minute to think about the quality you most admire in Eden as a colleague. Eden, you can answer the question for Ide. Kristin, you an answer the question for anyone you’d like to choose.

Decide who will share first.

Take one minute to share your answer. Your partner should listen quietly and keep strict time. Don’t take notes.

Share the same answer again for one minute. You may refine or add to your answer if you’d like.

The listening partner should take one-minute to reflect back what she or he heard.

Hold up between one to five fingers based on how well the person reflected back what you said, with five being a perfect reflection.

Correct whatever your partner may have misheard. Don’t be afraid to nitpick — nuances are important.

The listening partner should take one more minute to reflect your story back again.

Hold up between one-to-five fingers based on how well the person reflected back what you said.

Switch with your partner, and repeat the exercise.

Quickly debrief the exercise. What did you notice? How did you feel? What did you learn?

Workout: What makes a framework useful? (40min)

This will be similar to last week’s person-on-the-street exercise, but we’re not going to talk to others this week. (You’re always welcome to if you’d like. Take one minute in silence to think about the following: “Describe a framework that you have found valuable in your work or in your life.”

Take five minutes each to share your answers with each other. If you’d like to take notes while your partner talks, you can capture them in the shared Google Doc.

In the Google Doc, take 10-15 minutes to draft an answer based on your personal stories to the following questions:

What is a “framework”?

What makes a framework useful?

Based on your “framework” framework, revisit the shared framework we developed last week for “alignment.” Discuss whether it meets your criteria, and what you could change to make it more useful. Make note of these in the shared Google Doc, then actually make the changes to the “alignment” framework! (10min)

Checkout: Take a minute to share with your partner how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. (5min)

Each of you should post one brief takeaway as a comment to this post. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive or incredibly detailed. I’d strongly encourage you to share your takeaway immediately after your workout. Make it a point to read (and respond to, if so moved) other people’s takeaways every week.

This week’s homework:

As people share their notes from their workouts and this homework, draft and continuously refine a shared (among the whole Miles River team) definition and framework for “framework” in our shared Google Doc — what it means, how to create it, what it looks like when we have it.

By Wednesday of next week, our goal is to align around a solid, draft framework for “framework” and to have an improved framework for “alignment”!

If you’d like to read the generic cards for the exercises above (which include design thoughts and variations), see:

Wanted to share some followup thoughts from our solid kickoff last Thursday.

First, when it comes to understanding how to have and support a group of any kind or size in working through long-term strategy and culture, I want to ban, “We don’t know how to do this,” from Miles River’s vocabulary and eventually from Wye’s as well. At a high-level, we definitely know how to do it. The devil is in the details, but we can (and will) figure those out.

The main obstacle is commitment. It’s like training for a marathon. We know how to do it at a high-level, but the details will vary. The main thing is recognizing that it’s going to be hard and painful and hopefully enjoyable too. If folks are committed to doing the strategic equivalent of running every day, then they can do it, and they’ll have a high probability of success. Until we all recognize and acknowledge that commitment, we are not going to succeed.

Second, how are we going to pull off this April meeting? First, kudos to Eden for quickly landing on the later date, which buys us two weeks. It’s not a whole lot, but it makes a big difference.

In order to figure out the support time needed to design and facilitate a meeting, I take the number of meeting days (in our case, three) and multiply it by a number between one and three, depending on the complexity of the meeting. So a minimally complex meeting would require six days total (1 x 3 for design time + 3 for the meeting itself, not including followup). A very complex meeting would require 12 days total (3 x 3 for design time + 3 for the meeting itself, again not including followup). This is all per support team member, so the numbers pile up quickly.

There are several assumptions that go into these numbers. First, the meeting itself will be participatory (and awesome). Second, in order for that to happen, the design process should also be participatory. Third, at least half of the design time is spent aligning around goals and success. The more complex the meeting, the harder that is, hence the need for more time. Aligning around clear goals and success requires participant time. Once you have that, the support team has more agency in designing the meeting itself.

Our April meeting will not be minimally complex. You could make a strong argument that it’s actually maximally complex, since it’s meant to be the start of a larger process with lots of unanswered questions and a currently flawed container. I would typically want at least four months to design for such a meeting. We will have about two months… and that’s on top of a whole lot of other work we’ll be doing over the next few months.

So how on earth can we make this work?

If the goals were clearer, we could make the design process less participatory. That’s not our situation, so that’s out.

There’s a fine balance between design and facilitation. A well-designed meeting is less reliant on the skill of the facilitator. If you eliminate design time, you are more reliant on the skill of the facilitator for success. That was our situation for our November meeting. It wasn’t optimal, but you can make it work. We can do this for April, but I’m reluctant to do so, because it’s riskier, it repeats a reactive, rushed pattern we’re trying to break, and it won’t build the capacity of Miles River.

So what’s left?

Open Space. Open Space is optimized for self-organization and emergence. It provides just enough structure to support the participants, but ultimately, they’re responsible for their own success. If they’re good (and we know our participants are), they’ll be successful. The basic design is more or less a template, so it doesn’t require a lot of time to design the days themselves. Facilitation is very light touch as well.

The best Open Space meetings have a strong invitation and at least three days. (Most people make the mistake of constraining their Open Space to one day or even less, which doesn’t leave enough time for shared understanding to develop.) We have three days, and we can use the design time we have to develop a strong invitation.

Because it’s light touch, the participants recognize that they are fully in charge of this ship. Not only does it force them to take responsibility, but when they see that it’s successful, they will be more motivated and empowered to replicate it on their own. Ultimately, we want to break them of this notion that highly skilled facilitators are required for them to be successful. (It always helps, but it shouldn’t be required in every situation.) Open Space will help us do that.

That won’t mean that they won’t be supported. There is an art to facilitating Open Space meetings effectively, and on top of that, we’ll be providing knowledge support. We’ll use artifacts to help facilitate sessions, and we’ll make meaning of those artifacts together at the end of each day. Those artifacts will help the conversations themselves be more productive (see the Tic-Tac-Toe exercise from Thursday), and they will also serve as the basis for sharing what happens with those who couldn’t make it. It will also be great practice opportunities for all of us.

We’ll also create some real-time dashboards to help them see themselves and prioritize. For example, we might put up an Eisenhower Matrix, and at the end of each day, cluster the sessions that happened in the corresponding quadrant. That will help the participants themselves see where they’re spending their time and whether or not they need to make an adjustment.

There’s still some stuff to think through, and enrollment will likely be a challenge, but I think this is the right direction overall. Feedback and pushback encouraged!

Hello, Miles River! Our Muscles & Mindsets pair workouts kick off this week. Make sure you have a (preferably standing) one-hour call set up with your workout partner this week. Here is your first workout.

Start your workout by taking one minute to pause and breathe deeply together in silence. You’ll be starting each of your workouts off this way. (1min)

Do a brief checkin with your partner. (3min)

Warmup: Take a minute individually to reflect on what you think of when you hear the word, “alignment.” Write down five words that come up for you when you hear the word, “alignment.” Do it in your own document or on your own paper so that your partner can’t see your words. When you’ve both written down five words, copy them into the appropriate section of our shared workout Google Doc. (5min)

Workout: Person on the Street (50min)

The big question you’ll be answering together is, “What is ‘alignment’?” But we’re going to start with a more personal, experiential question to help us answer this bigger question. Take one minute in silence to think about the following: “Describe a recent personal experience where you felt in strong alignment with someone else. What enabled you to feel that way?”

Take five minutes each to share your answers with each other. If you’d like to take notes while your partner talks, you can capture them in the shared Google Doc.

In the Google Doc, take 10-15 minutes to draft an answer based on your personal stories to: “What is ‘alignment’?”

Identify one person to interview together. It could be a stranger or someone you know. Call them, ask them for five minutes of their time, and ask them the same experiential question as above: “Describe a recent personal experience where you felt in strong alignment with someone else. What enabled you to feel that way?”

Revisit the bigger question about alignment with your partner. Revise your answer based on what you learned from your interview. (10min)

Checkout: Take a minute to share with your partner how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. (5min)

Each of you should post one brief takeaway as a comment to this post. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive or incredibly detailed. I’d strongly encourage you to share your takeaway immediately after your workout. Make it a point to read (and respond to, if so moved) other people’s takeaways every week.

In addition to the pair workouts, we will all do some practice both individually and collectively in the form of weekly homework. We’ll use the shared Google Doc to capture our homework assignments and Slack to discuss them, although I’d strongly encourage sharing thinking as new blog posts here as well. This week’s homework:

In addition to the shared person you interviewed with your partner for the workout, each of you should interview one more person for the “person on the street” interview. Capture your notes in the shared Google Doc.

As people share their notes from their workouts and this homework, draft and continuously refine a shared (among the whole Miles River team) definition and framework for “alignment” in our shared Google Doc — what it means, how to create it, what it looks like when we have it.

By the end of the week, our goal is to align around a solid, draft framework for “alignment”!

If you’d like to read the generic cards for the exercises above (which include design thoughts and variations), see: